The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Summary

Summary of the NovelTom Joad, a prison parolee, meets Jim Casy, a preacher who has given up his calling. They go to Tom’s home looking for his family, but the Joad farm and all those around it are deserted. They are told the Joads are living with Tom’s Uncle John. Arriving at Uncle John’s house, they learn the family has lost their farm and are making preparations to sell their belongings and move to California in search of promised work.

With Casy accompanying them, the Joads encounter many hardships on the road west, and the family crumbles. Grampa dies the first night he is separated from his beloved land. Granma dies while they are crossing the Arizona desert. Noah and Connie give up and leave the family. The further west they go, the more resistant and unfriendly the people are.

In California the family goes from camp to camp in a futile search for work and their living conditions worsen. Jim Casy organizes a strike against the unfair low wages being paid and is killed. Tom kills Jim’s murderer and goes into hiding. He leaves the family to continue Casy’s work. The Joads move to a cottonfield where the pay is better.

Rose of Sharon delivers a stillborn baby during a fearful storm. The family has to abandon their boxcar home to escape the resultant flood. Taking refuge in a hillside barn, they discover a young boy and his near-dead, starving father who is saved when Rose feeds him from her milk-filled breasts.

Estimated Reading Time

The average person should be able to read the entire novel in a total of approximately 12 to 18 hours.

It is suggested that the reading of the novel be divided into the three blocks indicated. These three blocks divide the story into what happens in Oklahoma, on the journey west, and after the migrants arrive in California.

If desired, the reading can be further broken down into the six sub-units listed. In this study guide, study questions and suggested essay topics follow the summary and discussion of each of the six sub-units.

In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck vents his anger against a capitalistic society that was capable of plunging the world into an economic depression, but he does not exonerate the farmers who have been driven from the Dust Bowl of the midwestern and southwestern United States. He deplores their neglect of the land that resulted in the Dust Bowl and which helped to exacerbate the Great Depression.

The book is interestingly structured. Interspersed among its chapters are frequent interchapters, vignettes that have little direct bearing on the novel’s main narrative. These interchapters contain the philosophical material of the book, the allegories such as that of the turtle crossing the road. As the animal makes its tedious way across the dusty thoroughfare, drivers swerve to avoid hitting it. One vicious driver, however, aims directly for it, clearly intending to squash it. Because this driver’s aim is not accurate, he succeeds only in nicking the corner of the turtle’s carapace, catapulting it to the side of the road it was trying to reach. Once the dust settles and the shock wears off, the turtle emerges and continues on its way, dropping as it does a grain of wheat from the folds of its skin. When the rains come, this grain will germinate; this is Steinbeck’s intimation of hope.

As the narrative opens, Tom Joad has been released from a prison term he served for having killed someone in self-defense. On his way home, he falls in with Jim Casy, a former preacher down on his luck. Jim’s initials can be interpreted religiously, as can much of the book. When Jim and Tom get to the farm where the Joads were tenant farmers, they find the place deserted, as are the farms around it, now dusty remnants of what they had been. Tom learns that his family has sold what little it owned, probably for five cents on the dollar, and headed to the promised land: California. En route, the family has paused to rest at a relative’s place and to work on the antique truck they had bought secondhand for the trip. Tom and Jim catch up with them there, and they all leave—an even dozen of them—for the land in which they have placed their future hope.

The chronicle of the slow trip west, reminiscent of the turtle’s arduous creep across the parched road, is recorded in such realistic detail that the reader is transported into a world peopled by hobos, stumblebums, the dispossessed, the disenchanted, and the dislocated—all of them pushing ahead to the jobs they believe exist for agricultural workers in California. Death haunts the motley band, threatening the elderly and those who are weak. The grandfather dies of a stroke the first night out; his wife dies as the family crosses the Mojave Desert. Noah, the retarded son, wanders off and is not heard from again. Ahead, however, lies hope, so the Joads bury their dead and keep going.

The land of their hearts desire, however, proves to be no Garden of Eden. The dream of a future that will offer hope and security quickly develops into a nightmare. Tom’s sister, Rose of Sharon, lacks the funds for a funeral when her baby dies. She prays over it and sets it adrift in the rushes beside a river. Tom gets into trouble with the police, but Jim surrenders in his place and is taken away. By the time Tom and Jim meet again, Jim is a labor agitator. In an encounter with the police, Jim is killed and Tom is injured. The Joads hide Tom in their shack, then sneak him into a farm. There he takes up Jim’s work as a labor organizer.

As the rains come, the Joads, who are encamped beside a river, endure floods that ruin their old truck. Having no place to live, they go into a decrepit barn, where a boy and his starving father have sought shelter. Rose of Sharon, having lost her baby, nourishes the starving man with the milk from her breasts, thereby saving his life. One is reminded again of the turtle and of the grain of wheat it deposits in the desiccated soil.

The Grapes of Wrath is a bitter tale of humans against nature and against a brutally exploitive society, but it is also a tale of nobility, of self-sacrifice, and ultimately of hope. It often offends the sensibilities, but life frequently offends one’s sensibilities. The novel is a polemic, but one more detached and objective than first thought by many a critic.

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck’s masterpiece, is a starkly realistic rendition of the Depression-era struggle of an Oklahoma farm family forced to move to California in order to find employment. The family’s dilemma represents that of all rural, working-class households in the Midwest and West during an age of increasing mechanization for upper-class, capitalistic profit. In addition, Steinbeck’s female characters, especially, convey his message of working-class unity.

The Joads are typical 1930’s tenant farmers, forced from home because “one man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families.” Reading advertisements of work available in California, the Joads buy an old truck for the journey. The trip quickly kills lifelong Oklahoman Grandpa Joad, and Grandma Joad dies in the Nevada desert. Throughout, the impoverished Joads are victimized repeatedly, microcosmically representative of the entire capital exploitation system underlying the Great Depression.

Ma Joad’s determination, however, helps the Joads reach California. They then learn of their further victimization by machines. The work advertisements were mass-produced and deliberately overdisseminated to entice excess workers, thereby depressing wages even further and creating widespread unemployment in California. Fortunately, the family finds shelter in a government-operated, socialist-style cooperative camp, where a central committee makes management decisions and tenants work and share equally. The Joads begin to realize that only by working-class unity can they hope to combat the crop owners and their police. As Ma Joad states, “If you’re in trouble or hurt or need—go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help—the only ones.”

The Joads then show they can reciprocate as class-conscious members of the struggle for economic survival in an America dominated by the capitalist “monster.” After Rose of Sharon’s baby is predict-ably stillborn, given the family’s deprivation, the Joads are forced from home by a flood. Struggling to higher ground, they take refuge in an old barn, where they discover a starving man and his son. Proving their newfound dedication to their class and ability to adjust, endure, and eventually conquer, Ma and Rose of Sharon look at each other, Rose of Sharon saying “Yes.” Ma responds, “I knowed you would. I knowed!” as Rose of Sharon kneels beside the starving man to feed him from her breast. The Joad women thus demonstrate that all of the suffering poor are their family, to be nurtured and sustained in the unending struggle for economic justice in an economically unjust America.

Tom Joad, Jr., is released from the Oklahoma state penitentiary where he served a sentence for killing a man in self-defense. He travels homeward through a region made barren by drought and dust storms. On the way, he meets Jim Casy, a former preacher; the pair go together to the home of Tom’s family. They find the Joad place deserted. While Tom and Casy are wondering what happened, Muley Graves, a die-hard tenant farmer, ccomes by and discloses that all the families in the neighborhood have gone to California or are going. Tom’s folks, Muley says, went to a relative’s place to prepare for going west. Muley is the only sharecropper to stay behind. All over the southern Midwest states, farmers, no longer able to make a living because of land banks, weather, and machine farming, sold or were forced out of the farms they tenanted. Junk dealers and used-car salesmen profiteer on them. Thousands of families take to the roads leading to the promised land: California.

Tom and Casy find the Joads at Uncle John’s place, all busy with preparations for their trip to California. Assembled for the trip are Pa and Ma Joad; Noah, their developmentally disabled son; Al, the adolescent younger brother of Tom and Noah; Rose of Sharon, Tom’s sister, and her husband, Connie; the Joad children, Ruthie and Winfield; and Granma and Grampa Joad. Al has bought an ancient truck to take them West. The family asks Casy to go with them. The night before they start, they kill the pigs they have left and salt down the meat so that they will have food on the way.

Spurred by handbills that state that agricultural workers are badly needed in California, the Joads, along with thousands of others, make their tortuous way, in a worn-out vehicle, across the plains toward the mountains. Grampa dies of a stroke during their first overnight stop. Later, there is a long delay when the truck breaks down. Small businesspeople along the way treat the migrants as enemies, and, to add to their misery, returning migrants tell the Joads that there is no work to be had in California, that conditions are even worse than they are in Oklahoma. The dream of a bountiful West Coast, however, urges the Joads onward.

Close to the California line, where the group stops to bathe in a river, Noah, feeling he is a hindrance to the others, wanders away. It is there that the Joads first hear themselves addressed as Okies, another word for tramps. Granma dies during the night trip across the desert. After burying her, the group goes into a Hooverville, as the migrants’ camps are called. There they learn that work is all but impossible to find. A contractor comes to the camp to sign up men to pick fruit in another county. When the Okies ask to see his license, the contractor turns the leaders over to a police deputy who accompanied him to camp. Tom is involved in the fight that follows. He escapes, and Casy surrenders himself in Tom’s place. Connie, husband of the pregnant Rose of Sharon, suddenly disappears from the group. The family is breaking up in the face of its hardships. Ma Joad does everything in her power to keep the group together.

Fearing recrimination after the fight, the Joads leave Hooverville and go to a government camp maintained for transient agricultural workers. The camp has sanitary facilities, a local government made up of the transients themselves, and simple organized entertainment. During the Joads’ stay at the camp, the Okies successfully defeat an attempt of the local citizens to give the camp a bad name and thus to have it closed to the migrants. For the first time since they arrived in California, the Joads find themselves treated as human beings.

Circumstances eventually force them to leave the camp, however, for there is no work in the district. They drive to a large farm where work is being offered. There they find agitators attempting to keep the migrants from taking the work because of the unfair wages offered. The Joads, however, thinking only of food, are escorted by motorcycle police to the farm. The entire family picks peaches for five cents a box and earns in a day just enough money to buy food for one meal. Tom, remembering the pickets outside the camp, goes out at night to investigate. He finds Casy, who is the leader of the agitators. While Tom and Casy are talking, deputies, who have been searching for Casy, close in on them. The pair flee but are caught. Casy is killed. Tom receives a cut on his head, but not before he fells a deputy with an ax handle. The family conceals Tom in their shack. The rate for a box of peaches drops, meanwhile, to two-and-a-half cents. Tom’s danger and the futility of picking peaches drive the Joads on their way. They hide the injured Tom under the mattresses in the back of the truck, and then they tell the suspicious guard at the entrance to the farm that the extra man they had with them when they came was a hitchhiker who stayed behind to pick.

The family finds at last a migrant crowd encamped in abandoned boxcars along a stream. They join the camp and soon find temporary jobs picking cotton. Tom, meanwhile, hides in a culvert near the camp. Ruthie innocently discloses Tom’s presence to another little girl. Ma, realizing that Tom is no longer safe, sends him away. Tom promises to carry on Casy’s work in trying to improve the lot of the downtrodden everywhere.

The autumn rains begin. Soon the stream that runs beside the camp overflows and water enters the boxcars. Under these all but impossible conditions, Rose of Sharon gives birth to a dead baby. When the rising water makes their position no longer bearable, the family moves from the camp on foot. The rains had made their old truck useless. They come to a barn, which they share with a boy and his starving father. Rose of Sharon, bereft of her baby, nourishes the famished man with the milk from her breasts. The poor keep each other alive in the years of the Great Depression.

New Characters
Tom Joad: the protagonist, an Oklahoma tenant farmer’s son

Jim Casy: a former preacher who now questions traditional beliefs as he observes human behavior

Muley Graves: a farmer reduced to homeless poverty when he loses his family’s land through foreclosure

SummaryChapter 1
When the last of light rains ended in early May, the land began to dry up. Weeds changed their color to protect themselves from the harsh sun and the corn faded and dried up. The few drops of rain that fell in June gave no help. Animal hooves and vehicle wheels broke the dry dirt crust and formed dust. Winds drove the dust until it mixed with...

(The entire section is 1946 words.)

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The Land As Character (Chapter 1)

There are two main character sets in Steinbeck’s novel. The first, of course, is the Joads, the beleaguered Oklahoma family of squatters forced to leave their home. The other central character is the land.

Pay attention to the minute detail in which Steinbeck describes the land. It is of such great importance, in fact, that the land emerges as a character first. It is described before any person comes onto the scene:

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently. They did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.

In the water-cut gullies the earth dusted down in dry little streams. Gophers and ant lions started small avalanches. And as the sharp sun struck day after day, the leaves of the young corn became less stiff and erect, they bent in a curve at first, and then, as the central ribs of strength grew weak, each leaf tilted downward. Then it was June, and the sun shone more fiercely. The brown lines of corn leaves widened and moved in on the central ribs. The weeds frayed and edged back on their roots. The air was thin and the sky more pale, and every day the earth paled.

If the land is a character, it is one who is down-and-out. This is not a picture of prosperity and growth, but of barrenness and abandonment, that something is coming to an end. For example, “The last rains” is repeated twice, followed by the “last part of May.”

The sense of defeat is evident in the personification of the clouds, which “did not try anymore.” (Personification is giving human qualities to non-living objects).

Additionally, the repetitions of “gray country” serve to impress upon the depression of the land, both literally and metaphorically.

Finally, in this initial chapter which shapes the character of Oklahoma’s land, Steinbeck uses alliteration (a literary device that repeats first letters or letter combinations of words). For example, “the clouds that had hung in high puffs”and “As the sharp sun struck day after day” both lend a feeling of oppression and immobility though sound to the landscape.

The Family Structure (Chapter 1)

The novel begins with a typical patriarchal family structure; that is, man as head of the family, women in secondary roles, and children, of course, at the bottom, with males children being of higher status than females (although age in female children does outrank those of younger male children, if only temporarily).

The men are the first to asses the dire situation. And even though they are the titular heads of household, there is a force greater than themselves: the weather.

Men first:

The men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn…

Then women:

And the women came out of the houses to stand beside the men and see if they would break. The women studied the men’s faces carefully, for the corn could go, as long as something else remains.

Then finally, the children:

…and the children sent exploring senses out to see if the men and women would break.

Both women and children have a sense of security, modest though it may be, as long as their men are still in charge:

The women do not see the “break” yet and are relieved. The children notice too. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole.

As the story continues, these divisions will begin to break down. Eventually the family structure that Ma tries to desperately to cling to, is decimated.

The Trucker and Tom Joad (Chapter 2)

One of the aspects of John Steinbeck’s writing that makes him so memorable and appealing is the way he is able to capture voice and movement of characters in vivid settings. This is apparent in Chapter 2, which takes place in a truck stop.

Here is an excerpt in which the protagonist, Tom Joad, is introduced, although he is not initially named. In the 1930s, the description of Tom’s clothes would have tipped a lot of people off that Tom is an “ex-con,” as convicts, just released from prison, were issued a new but typically ill-fitting suit as well as a pair of (usually) poorly fitted shoes.

The man’s clothes were new -- all of them, cheap and new. His gray cap was so new that he visor was still stiff and the button still on, not shapeless and bulged as it would when it had served for a while all the various purposes of a cap -- carrying sack, towel, handkerchief. HIs suit was of a cheap gray hardcloth and so new that there were creases in the trousers. His blue chambray shirt was stiff and smooth with filler. The coat was too big, the trousers too short, for he was a tall man. The coat shoulder peaks hung down on his arms, and even then the sleeves were too short and the front of the coat flapped loosely over his stomach. He wore a pair of new tan shoes of the kind called “army last,” hob-nailed and with half-circles like horseshoes to protect the edges of the heels from wear.

As Tom continues towards his family home in his uncomfortable garb, he meets a trucker Although the rig’s owner displays a sign proclaiming, “NO RIDERS,” quick-thinking Tom overcomes the company mandate:

The hitch-hiker stood up and looked across through the windows. “Could ya give me a lift, mister,”

The driver looked quickly back at the restaurant for a second. “Did you see the No Riders sticker on the win’shield?”

“Sure -- I seen it. But sometimes a guy’ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker.”

The trucker is in a bind. He surely know Tom is an ex-con by the look of his clothing. But he also knows that he and Tom are both working-class people caught in a system against which they have almost no power. If he denies Tom the ride, he denies his own autonomy.

The Aggressive Land, the Steadfast Turtle, and the Okies (Chapter 3)

The land is a character in this novel and an active one, although its means of pursuit might not appear to be aggressive on the surface. However, a closer look will reveal an incredibly mobile, even aggressive, landscape. Consider the opening paragraph of Chapter 3:

The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog’s coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse’s fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep’s wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seed armed with an appliance of dispersal, twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the wind, for a man’s trouser cuff or the hem of a woman’s skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed by the anlage of movement.

ACTIVE VERBS: catch, tangle,spread, dispersed, twisting, armed

STRONG NOUNS: darts, parachutes, spears, balls, thorns

STRONG ADJECTIVES: concrete, broken, dry, heavy, armed, twisting

There is a parallel to the Joads and the other “Okies” here as well. Although these impoverished families seem passive, at the mercy of the winds that blow them off their farms and the machinery which shoves them aggressively from one side of the country to the other, they too are armed with “appliances of activity” which will allow the people to replant and live again.

A land turtle crawls through this near war-zone-like environment.

And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high-domed shell over the grass: His hard legs and yellow-nailed feet threshed slowly through the grass…

It should be noted that there are parallels between the turtle and his “high domed” shell and the jalopies that traveled along Route 66 to California. These trucks were often piled so high with all of a family’s worldly possessions that the vehicles bore an uncanny resemblance to land turtles. Their movement, like the turtles, was necessarily slow due to the extreme weight the axles had to bear and the precarious arrangement of the items salvaged from homes.

There are further parallels to the turtle and the Okies. As the turtle crawls along, the head of a wild oat becomes trapped in his shell. A laborious climb up a steep hill does not dislodge the oat and finally the turtle plods across the highway as it had originally intended.

At this point, two cars come speeding down the highway. The first car is driven by a woman:

A sedan driven by a forty-year-old woman approached. She saw the turtle and swung to the right, off the highway, the wheels screamed and a cloud of dust boiled up. Two wheels lifted for a moment then settled. The car skidded back onto the road, and went on, but more slowly. The turtle had jerked into its shell, but now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot.

The second driver is male.

[T]he driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway. The truck went back to its course along the right side.

The differences between female protective action and male aggressive destruction are readily apparent. As for the turtle, he, like the many other aspects of the natural landscape, carries on:

Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for something to pull it over. Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright. The wild oat head fell out and three of the spearhead seeds stuck in the ground.

The turtle, like the Joads and many of the other travelers, eventually makes it to the other side of the road. It plants the seed where life will be renewed. The turtle might be considered as both male and female: female, because it transports the seed, like a child in utero, or male because it plants the seed in the soil, like sperm. Without both of these functions, life will not thrive. The migrants must create new life in a new place, much like the turtle has done.

Human Sexuality (Chapter 4)

One of the themes of Chapter 4 is the human need for sexual release. It is a basic human function and resists repression.

Consider the attitudes Steinbeck takes toward the corporeal in all its forms. He strongly believes in APPETITES: for food, for sex, for enjoyment. These appetites are most apparent when they are released from oppressions.

In Chapter 4, Casy reflects on his days as a preacher and how women would become especially lustful during revivals:

"I got to thinkin' like this—'Here's me preachin' grace. An' here's them people gettin' grace so hard they're jumpin' an' shoutin'. Now they say layin' up with a girl comes from the devil. But the more grace a girl got in her, the quicker she wants to go out in the grass.' An' I got to thinkin' how in hell, s'cuse me, how can the devil get in when a girl is so full of the Holy Sperit that it's spoutin' out of her nose an' ears. You'd think that'd be one time when the devil didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. But there it was." His eyes were shining with excitement. He worked his cheeks for a moment and then spat into the dust, and the gob of spit rolled over and over, picking up dust until it looked like a round dry little pellet. The preacher spread out his hand and looked at his palm as though he were reading a book. "An' there's me," he went on softly. "There's me with all them people's souls in my han'—responsible an' feelin' my responsibility—an' ever time, I lay with one of them girls." He looked over at Joad and his face looked helpless. His expression asked for help.

Sex is a natural part of life. It will find a way to happen. Tom listens to his friend, full of wonder and confusion, and as he attends,

Joad carefully drew the torso of a woman in the dirt, breasts, hips, pelvis.

This outline of a woman has the primitive feel of a cave drawing, yet it timeless. Men will always seek women, dream about them, desire them. And as the freedom-from-repression that Gramma exhibits, as well as the countless women Casy beds, women, too, desire sexual activity. All living creatures experience this primal drive and this, among the other appetites of the body are what will help the Joads and other migrants adapt and survive in the new land.

Man v. Machines (Chapter 5)

Notice the language and different ways the men from the banks interact with the land that they “own” compared to the language and various ways in which the people who actually live on and from the land interact with it.

Here is the opening paragraph of Chapter 5:

The owner’s of the land came onto the land, or more often a spokesman for the owners came. They came in closed cars, and they felt the dry earth with heir fingers, and sometimes they drove big earth augers into the ground for soil tests. The tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields. And at last the owner men drove into the dooryards and sat in their cars to talk out of the windows. The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust.

The word “closed” is twice repeated. When the owners deign to speak to the residents, they remain safely inside their vehicles.

The residents, however, have a much different relationship with the land:

In the open doors the women stood looking out, and behind them the children—corn-headed children, with wide eyes, one bare foot on top of the other bare foot, and the toes working. The women and the children watched their men talking to the owner men. They were silent.

The adjectives “open” and “corn-headed,” and "wide" in conjuction with the verbs “looking” and “working” help create an atmosphere of connection to the land. The barefeet, one on top of the other, also gives a sense of roots and being connected physically to the land beneath their soles (souls).

The question of who “owns” the land is what looms largest in this chapter. The years of sweat and toil, births and deaths, mean nothing to the faceless monolith of “the bank.” The emissaries of the “monster” try to explain to the incredulous tenants:

You'll have to get off the land. The plows'll go through the dooryard.

And now the squatting men stood up angrily. Grampa took up the land, and he had to kill the Indians and drive them away. And Pa was born here, and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An' we was born here. There in the door—our children born here. And Pa had to borrow money.

The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit of what we raised.

We know that—all that. It's not us, it's the bank. A bank isn't like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn't like a man either. That's the monster.

Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.

We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't like a man.

Yes, but the bank is only made of men.

No, you're wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

The tenants cried, Grampa killed Indians, Pa killed snakes for the land. Maybe we can kill banks—they're worse than Indians and snakes. Maybe we got to fight to keep our land, like Pa and Grampa did.

And now the owner men grew angry. You'll have to go.

With no clear enemy to fight against, the people are defeated. Without money and power, the bank's minions are correct: they will have to go. Neither fairness or justice enters into the equation.

Of Cars and Cons (Chapter 6)

One of the purposes of the intercalary chapters is to show that not only the Joads are suffering the injustices of much of the capitalist system; thousands of people who must also abandon their homes and ways of life are similarly suffering the slings and arrows of misfortune.

Perhaps the most obvious way that the lowest of the classes are being taken advantage of is in the used car lots that have sprung up all over the sides of highways like intransigent summer weeds. Like weeds, these “dealerships” suck everything they can out of their sources, in this case, the poor, who have no other option but to take what their meager funds can get them.

In a stratified society, those who are just a little bit better off than those below seem to feel a need to mentally place themselves far above the very low. The men who run these impromptu car lots, although no where near even middle class status, nonetheless treat their customers as almost subhuman. Even though each of their customers has very little to spend and must make the best decision for their families, the salesmen care nothing about their circumstances; they care only about how much graft can be gleaned from a particular mark. They watch the potential customers with a mixture of greed and loathing:

Those sons-of-bitches over there ain't buying. Every yard gets 'em. They're lookers. Spend all their time looking. Don't want to buy no cars; take up your time. Don't give a damn for your time. Over there, them two people—no, with the kids. Get 'em in a car. Start 'em at two hundred and work down. They look good for one and a quarter. Get 'em rolling. Get 'em out in a jalopy. Sock it to 'em! They took our time. Owners with rolled-up sleeves. Salesmen, neat, deadly, small intent eyes watching for weaknesses.

Watch the woman's face. If the woman likes it we can screw the old man. Start 'em on that Cad'. Then you can work 'em down to that '26 Buick. 'F you start on the Buick, they'll go for a Ford. Roll up your sleeves an' get to work. This ain't gonna last forever.

Show 'em that Nash while I get the slow leak pumped up on that '25 Dodge. I'll give you a Hymie when I'm ready.

Weaknesses, like a husband’s love for his wife, are easy to exploit, as are the man’s concern for his family in general. Further complicating matters is the fact that the majority of these immigrants have never had to deal with people who are aiming to con them. They are confronted with terms they do not know and scare tactics regarding their family’s safety, the veracity of the threats impossible to gauge.

The salesmen also prey on their customer’s social and moral codes. Not far removed from the lower class themselves, they understand how to exploit the desperate travelers’ senses of fairness. One dealer tells another:

Get 'em under obligation. Make 'em take up your time. Don't let 'em forget they're takin' your time. People are nice, mostly. They hate to put you out. Make 'em put you out, an' then sock it to 'em.

If that doesn’t work, the salesmen change tactics and move to insults. One of the most egregious insults was to be called a “piker,” someone who is stingy and will only place very small bets:

“Joe, did you know you was talkin' to pikers?”

“I ain't a piker. I got to get a car. We're goin' to California. I got to get a car.”

Time and again, Steinbeck shows that community and justice has been replaced by the importance of the individual and injustice. These charlatans will do whatever they have to do to sell a car, and care nothing of the consequences for the customer once the car has been driven off their lot. Underhanded tactics to do whatever it took were not isolated in the time of the Dust Bowl, but commonplace. One trick was to put sawdust in the engine; doing so would briefly quiet any banging noises and also temporarily block any leaks. The “fix,” however, was very temporary and the car salesmen knew it:

Listen, Jim, I heard that Chevvy's rear end. Sounds like bustin' bottles. Squirt in a couple quarts of sawdust. Put some in the gears, too. We got to move that lemon for thirty-five dollars. Bastard cheated me on that one. I offer ten an' he jerks me to fifteen, an' then the son-of-a-bitch took the tools out. God Almighty! I wisht I had five hundred jalopies. This ain't gonna last. He don't like the tires? Tell 'im they got ten thousand in 'em, knock off a buck an' a half.

Tom Joad, the Dust Bowl, and McAlester Prison (Chapter 7)

His family is gone. His home is destroyed. His friends are nowhere to be found. Even though there is nothing tangible to keep Tom Joad in his old neighborhood, he has one primary reason for his reluctance to leave Oklahoma: parole.

You get along O.K. les' some guard gets it in for ya. Then you catch plenty hell. I got along O.K. Minded my own business, like any guy would.”

McAlester prison opened in 1908 and was a relatively young facility when Tom Joad was admitted. Tom had been there four years, and was released three years early (“Sure I been in McAlester. Been there four years.” - Chapter 2; ). Based on these dates, it is likely that Tom Joad was incarcerated in McAlester from 1933-1937.

The doors locked behind Tom just as the storms were increasing in intensity. According to PBS’s “Timeline: Surviving the Dustbowl. 1931-1934,

“Great dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area. The drought is the worst ever in U.S. history, covering more than 75 percent of the country and affecting 27 states severely.”

Before Tom went away, however, he was aware that some weather anomalies were occurring in Oklahoma. In 1932, PBS reports, fourteen significant dust storms had occurred. By 1933, that number had doubled.

The dust storms continued to occur, becoming even more frequent and powerful. On April 14, 1933, an horrific event known as the “Black Dustbowl” occurred, displacing some 300,000 tons of top soil and most greatly affecting the areas of Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. Then, in 1934, just one year after Tom went away, the “Yearbook of Agriculture” announced that

“[a]pproximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production…. 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil….”.

When Tom is dropped off by the trucker, in 1937, what had been some abnormalities at home had become unmitigated disasters, and not all of them, of course, were weather-related. Banks were seizing farms by the hundreds, forcing their residents to go elsewhere. As the land was unusable, these displaced families had to go elsewhere.

The novel does not reveal how much, if any, of this was known to Tom prior to his release but his dismay indicates that he was ignorant of most of the events of the prior four years.

Tom’s world from 1933 to 1937 was necessarily interior although because of his assignment to a work crew, he could not have been completely in the dark about the dust storms. Tom, like thousands of others, was a participant in prison labor. Prisons had been in existence in America for about 100 years by the late 1930s and had remained largely unchanged: most were terrible and inmates were given only the bare necessities to survive. Privacy was not an option. What did change was the numbers of people, mostly men, who found themselves behind bars in by the late 1930s; incarceration rates climbed from 79 to 137 per 100,000 residents between 1925-1929.

Prison labor had long been a part of life for the incarcerated, who, unlike free citizens, could be compelled to work. While there were large numbers of black men and other minorities assigned to chain gangs and other work, the numbers of white men forced to work was relatively low in comparison. However, by 1934, many more white men were conscripted into service. The reason for this can be found in the growing numbers of inmates crammed in too-small housing. Riots were flaring more and more frequently and prison officials lobbied Congress to create a work program and in 1934, the 73rd Congress approved the Federal Prison Industries.

It was into this mix of circumstances that Tom Joad was thrown. It is likely that Tom worked on a road crew, as evidenced by the location of the callouses on his hands, which the trucker who lets Tom ride with him observes:

“I seen your hands. Been swingin' a pick or an ax or a sledge.”

Road crew workers often worked from sunup to sundown. Given the location of the work, sometimes cots were set up and the prisoners guarded while they slept so that they could be back on the job as soon as there was enough sunlight to do so.

No one would want to return to prison. But in 1937, for Tom Joad, violating his parole meant a return to subhuman conditions and a life of brutal work.

Pa Joad and Thrust: The Changing Roles for Men (Chapter 8)

Steinbeck, a careful linguist, repeats one word in connection with the character of Pa Joad a total of five times in Chapter Eight. This is no accident, but seemingly a deliberate association with the "power" men often exercise in the world:

His face, squared by a bristling pepper and salt beard, was all drawn down to the forceful chin, a chin thrust out and built out by the stubble beard which was not so grayed on the chin, and gave weight and force to its thrust.

His eyes were brown, black-coffee brown, and he thrust his head forward when he looked at a thing, for his bright dark eyes were failing.

Pa's chin thrust out, and he looked back down the road for a moment.

The old man thrust out his bristly chin, and he regarded Ma with his shrewd, mean, merry eyes.

The word “thrust” is often used to describe males who are having sex; being able to participate in sexual activity is frequently seen as the mark of a man. Sexual relations, of course, often lead to procreation.

Before Pa must leave his home, he feels in control of his life: virile, able-bodied, and the head of his household. However, just as the tractors churn up the land they claim, social roles are being overturned and upended as well. The more Pa becomes disassociated with the roles he had previously embraced, the more impotent, helpless, and dependent he will become.

Ma Joad and Changing Gender Roles (Chapter 8)

The description of Ma Joad in Chapter Eight reveals a complex character, one who operates both below and above the surface of her family to assure that everything is running as smoothly as possible. Pa may think himself the head-of-household, but this is a role that Ma allows him to assume. Ma Joad is like a secretary who secretly does all the work for which the boss takes the credit. Make no mistake, however: the center of this family is Ma. As the wheels of patriarchy start to come off, Ma takes her behind-the-scenes role to the stage. She is equipped to do so even if the push into the light is not one she would ever have independently pursued.

Consider all the descriptive words in this passage that belie Ma’s strength but also her softness:

Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the background. The dress came down to her ankles, and her strong, broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl. She looked out into the sunshine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone.

Words of strength: heavy, thick, strong , quickly, deftly, steel-gray, controlled, experienced all possible tragedy, mounted pain and suffering like steps, citadel, strong place that could not be taken, imperturbability, great dignity, healer, arbiter, sure, cool, faultless in judgment as a goddess

Ma, throughout the novel, will be both of these things: strong and soft. But like Pa, who must eventually acknowledge his diminished role, Ma, too, must endure yet another painful experience: the shifting of gender roles. She can no longer allow Pa to be the titular head of the family. For the citadel to stay safe, she must embrace the power she has for so long wielded in the shadows.

New Characters
Ivy Wilson: a farmer from Kansas, headed west, whose car has broken down along the highway

Sarah Wilson: his wife, who shows the strain of travel

SummaryChapter 12
Highway 66 was the main cross-country road running through Oklahoma and on west. On its long way it crossed mountains, dusty plains, more mountains, the arid southwestern desert, and one final range of mountains before reaching the fertile green valleys of California. The migrants streamed from their former homes to the north and south of it and turned westward, forming small caravans of whatever vehicles they had been able to obtain.

SummaryChapter 17
Day by day the migrants moved westward along the highway, clustering each night where there was water and company. Each camp became a temporary world for the night and “twenty families became one family.” A form of self-government grew up. Out of the respect for law and order they brought from their old homes, the migrants established rules of conduct and of rights among themselves, and the rules became laws. Any violator of these laws was expelled from the group. Evenings were spent in making friends and talking about their homes and their future. There might even...

New Characters
Jim Rawley: the manager of a camp where the migrants govern themselves and living conditions are much better

Ezra Huston: a migrant who heads the Central Committee, the group of people who regulate conduct in the camp

SummaryChapter 22
The Joads go to a camp provided for the migrants by the Federal government where there is one vacant spot they can occupy. Tom learns that cops can’t come into this camp unless there is major trouble or they have a warrant, and the migrants elect their own police and make their own laws.

The next morning Tom meets the Wallaces. They invite him to breakfast and offer to take him to a...

New Characters
Mr. and Mrs. Wainwright: migrants who have little left but their pride who share living space in a boxcar with the Joads

Aggie Wainwright: their daughter who will marry Al Joad

SummaryChapter 27
There was cotton to be picked and willing hands to pick it. The wages weren’t bad and they knew cotton, having picked it back home. They bought a collecting bag and paid for it with the first part of their labor. It was hard, tiring work. They dragged the big bag and filled it. Even the kids helped fill it. And they talked and sang as they worked. The bag got heavy. They got paid by the weight. The boss said they put rocks in it, and...